Foreign Policy Blogs

BP spill and mental health

ProPublica reported last week that BP has committed funding of $52 million to treating mental health victims affected by the Gulf oil spill.  This has come after the publication of the Mailman School’s release of a study (“Impact on Children and Families of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill“) which interviewed over 1200 residents of Louisiana and Mississippi.  Key findings included the statistic that over one-third of parents reported that their children had experienced either physical symptoms or mental health distress as a consequence of the oil spill.

 

Author

Cynthia Schweer Rayner

Cynthia Schweer Rayner is an independent consultant and philanthropy advisor specializing in public health, social entrepreneurship and scalable business models for positive social change. As a recovering management consultant, she spent several months living in South Africa, and later co-founded the US branch of an organization providing support to orphaned and vulnerable children. In 2009, she was an LGT Venture Philanthropy Fellow, working with mothers2mothers (m2m), a multinational non-profit organization employing mothers living with HIV as peer educators to positive pregnant women. She currently works with individuals, companies and nonprofits to finance and develop models for positive change. Cynthia has an MBA from INSEAD and a BA in English Literature from Georgetown University. She currently lives in Cape Town and visits New York frequently, where she co-owns a Manhattan-based yoga studio, mang'Oh yoga (www.mangohstudio.com).